


Gertie + Sammy

by performativezippers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Cat lesbians, F/F, Twitter Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27165367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/performativezippers/pseuds/performativezippers
Summary: a posting of a twitter fic about cats and zoom
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 83
Kudos: 306





	Gertie + Sammy

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost of my recent twitter fic. I've fixed a few typos but otherwise changed nothing from the twitter version, because if I started trying to change things, I'd rewrite the whole thing and it would take forever and be the opposite of the point! So please enjoy, in all of its flawed glory.

All of the students in Professor Sawyer's classes have gotten to know Sammy in the last few months.

Lockdown has been hard on everyone, and trying to focus on criminology class would be tough anyway, but the BLM protests have made thinking about policing even harder.

Sawyer's a great professor, though. She encourages them to think about the nuances, and the power dynamics. She's understanding about missed deadlines and bad internet and zoom fatigue. She's been known to help connect students struggling financially with resources. She's nice.

Her classes aren't always the most organized, but they're fun and interesting—at least as much as anything can be on zoom. She's dynamic, with an easy smile and a loud laugh. Her background is always a little cluttered, but not with anything personal. Just sweaters, or cat toys.

She usually spends a couple minutes digging through the files on her desk to find the assigned articles, and Sammy walks over her keyboard enough that all of her students are used to seeing "lkkkkkkjjjjjjsshshshssssssssssswwwwww1```````" show up in the chat every once in a while.

Sammy's a small black cat, thin and sleek. She's the kind of cat that craves attention, and has been known to swat at Professor Sawyer's face in the middle of lecture if her owner is careless enough to stop scratching her to answer a tough question.

Everyone loves Sammy. 

Sometimes Professor Sawyer will ask everyone else who has a pet in the room with them to hold them up to the camera, and everyone gets to make stupid little faces at each other’s cats and small dogs, and that one girl who has a rabbit on her lap every day.

It's cute.

Not so with Professor Danvers.

Professor Danvers is a hardass. Her classes are run with military precision. They begin on the dot, and they finish within a three second margin of error. There's no "let's end class early," or "turn your videos off and take a long break."

She sits in front of a white wall—stark, plain, harsh. She usually wears black. Her classes are almost impossibly hard. She teaches xenobiology, and the sheer volume of information she has in her head about dozens of species is terrifying. Her exams frequently make people cry.

Her one allowance since the pandemic is that she grades on a curve. But still.

Brutal. 

The students in her senior seminar, though, get to see a little more of who she is underneath the rigid posture and unyielding expectations. They see her roll her eyes, sometimes, and she's even smiled twice. She's still demanding and scary, but she's more human.

One Tuesday, she seems a little distracted. She's muting herself more than usual, looking down at the floor with a crinkle between her eyebrows. The students try to make confused eye contact about it, but that's impossible in the Brady Bunch zoom boxes.

Finally, Dr. Danvers sighs, leans down, and then sits back up, looking into the camera just as stern as usual. But now there's a cat on her lap. A huge, fluffy, fat tabby cat, purring and licking its paws, a very satisfied look on its face.

The zoom rings with a shocked silence. 

She asks two questions in a row, but all fifteen students are just blinking at her.

Dr. Danvers...has a cat? A living, breathing companion?

She's not just a horrifyingly smart xenobiology robot?

What's next? A houseplant? A friend??

"Um, sorry, Dr. Danvers," Sarah says, timidly unmuting herself. Sarah's a good student—getting A's now that it's curved—and apparently today she's brave. "But is that...do you have a cat?"

Dr. Danvers blinks for a second, before looking down, almost surprised to see herself petting the furry monstrosity on her lap.

"Yes," she says, absently scratching under the enormous chin. "This is Gertrude."

Sarah and the other student off mute, Katie, make choked sounds in the back of their throats.

Dr. Danvers scowls her question into the camera, and Katie quickly backpedals. "I love that name for a cat," she gushes, far too enthusiastic.

"Very original," Sarah adds, blinking.

Dr. Danvers just imperceptibly shrugs. "Is it?" she asks, but it's absent, clearly not a question she wants them to answer.

Katie and Sarah frantically text each other.

"Does she not know?"  
"What the FUCK?"  
"GERTRUDE THE CAT???"  
"I swear I didn't take drugs before class did I?"

From then on, every once in a while during senior seminar, Gertrude the cat will make an appearance. She purrs so loudly that Dr. Danvers has to mute herself, and she seems like absolutely a slut for belly rubs, constantly rolling onto her back and wantonly splaying her legs.

Even the oblivious boys in the class have started sending cat memes in the XBSeniorSemHell group chat.

* * *

"Okay, we have about five minutes left before the guest speaker," Professor Sawyer says one Thursday during Crim 304: Special Topics in Criminology. "Any questions?"

There's a long, awkward silence, finally blissfully broken by the loudest mewl any of them have ever heard. 

"Samantha!" Professor Sawyer chastises, looking down at the floor next to her. "Quiet during class hours!"

"Wait," Susanna says, a senior who Professor Sawyer likes a lot. "Is your cat's name...Samantha?" 

Sawyer looks at her little square like she's stupid. "Yes," she says, a little slowly. "Sammy, short for Samantha."

"Right. Sorry," Susanna mumbles. "I just...um...how did you pick the name Samantha? I've never met a cat with that name before." 

Katie and Sarah text each other.

"What is with these weird ass cat names this semester??"  
"First Gertrude and now Samantha. What's next?"  
"Edith"  
"Melissa"  
"Susan"  
"Linda"  
"Sarah"  
"🙄🙄 you're so hilarious" 

Sawyer picks up the cat in question, scratching between her black ears. "She's named after the character from Bewitched." She looks between all the zoom boxes. "Have any of you seen it?"

They all shake their heads, and so does she. Youths. No sense of early feminist culture.

"It's a classic TV show, black and white. It's about a woman, Samantha, who is a witch married to a guy who's um, a muggle, I guess. And she's trying to be a normal 60's housewife, but she keeps using magic and getting herself into shenanigans. It's amazing."

"Oh wait," Katie says, "Is that the one where she does that, like, nose twitch?"

"Yes!" Professor Sawyer nods hard. "Exactly." She holds Sammy up to the camera and nudges her nose around. "That's how she does her magic."

"But anyway. Samantha's a total icon because she's so powerful, and she never lets her husband control her or damp down her powers. She's awesome. She was a big deal in the 60's—powerful, feminine, loving, but strong enough to be on her own if she wanted to. She was new."

"And so this little thing—small, independent, witchy? Had to be Samantha."

She nudges Sammy's nose around one more time before the cat, offended and indignant, hops off her lap with silent hatred and starts licking herself on the floor, clearly in view of the camera.

"Classy," Sawyer drawls, rolling her eyes.

"Independent women," Sarah writes in the chat. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

Professor Sawyer is in the middle of snorting when the guest speaker logs in.

* * *

Dr. Danvers is leading a review for the big exam. Or, well, she's trying to, but Gertrude is going absolutely batshit. She's running around, off camera, screaming and crashing into things.

"Oh my god," Dr. Danvers finally says. "I'm sorry, everyone. Hold on."

She slips out of her seat, and the senior seminar can hear her chasing the cat around the room.

"Gerty, for the love of god, shut up."

More chasing sounds, then, "What's WRONG with you today?"

A thump, a crinkling sound, then, "Oh NO. You didn't." 

She comes back into the frame a minute later, holding what looks like an absolutely crazed Gertrude: fur fluffed out, eyes wide and wild.

Dr. Danvers sits down again, wrestling the enormous cat onto her lap.

"Calm down," she orders sternly, holding the cat with an iron grip.

"Sorry," she says into the camera, a grimace on her face. "She got into the catnip, I have no idea how."

The students can't help but laugh. Gertrude is staring into the computer with the focused disbelief of someone who is WAY too high seeing something that can't be real.

"Poor Gerty." Katie manages. "Too high?"

"Way too high," Dr. Danvers agrees. "Hopefully she'll transition into the sleeping it off phase pretty soon."

For the next twenty minutes, though, Gertrude just stares at them all, judgmental and possibly haunted.

Dr. Danvers keeps trying to turn her around so that she's not staring through the souls of all fifteen seniors just trying to pass this stupid class, but Gertrude can do some impressive contortion work, and she manages to glare at them from under her legs and around her back.

Finally she falls asleep, as predicted, but she does so horizontally across Dr. Danvers' lap, her head falling off Dr. Danvers' right side, and her back legs falling off the left.

It's so ridiculous and precarious—belly up, high as fuck—that it doesn't help anyone concentrate.

Everyone is pretty sure they're going to fail the test. It was the least productive review session of all time.

"Catnipped!" Susanna writes in their group chat.

"Sabotaged by Gertrude the Cat!" Sarah agrees.

Katie turns a screenshot of Staring High Gertie into a meme with the words I HOPE YOU FAIL around her face.

"Don't worry, Gert," Susanna replies. "I will."

But maybe Dr. Danvers enjoyed the catnip too, because she curves the exam more than usual, and no one fails.

Katie turns the picture of Gertie into a benevolent meme. "MAY THE PATRON SAINT OF GETTING HIGH BLESS YOUR GRADES," it says.

* * *

A few classes after the exam, Dr. Danvers logs into zoom and her background is different. It's still mostly white wall behind her, but there's the bottom of a framed photograph behind her head, and she's sitting in what looks like a dining table chair.

"I'm having some work done on the roof today, and it's a bit loud in my office," she says before getting down to business. "Hopefully it will be quieter here."

No one thinks much of it until halfway through when, while she's on mute, she looks up and to her right.

She focuses her eyes about five or six off the ground. She nods a few times, and then says a few words—muted, of course.

"That wasn't a cat," Sarah texts Katie and Susanna. "Too tall"  
"DOES SHE LIVE WITH SOMONE??"  
"OMG imagine being her roommate! Terrifying"  
"you guys what if she's like, MARRIED"  
"OMG"  
"i'm trying to picture what kind of guy she would be secretly married to"  
"also a biologist?"  
"maybe an alien"  
"what if he's like, an ultra marathoner"  
"WHAT IF HE ALSO WORKS HERE"  
"I bet he's like a surgeon or something"

But the mysterious roommate/secret husband doesn't come back, and class goes on as usual without any more clues.

Gertrude does not make an appearance.

* * *

Professor Sawyer cancels class one day. The next time they meet, she looks like absolute crap. Pale, drawn, huge circles under her eyes. Her skin is waxy, sort of pallid. She looks like a sickly orphan or sweatshop worker in a Dickens novel, basically.

Her voice is a little hoarse, and she's taking these tiny little sips of water.

She's clearly sick.

All of the students try to take pity on her. Answering her questions quickly, participating a lot, keeping the chat light and on topic.

It's the least they can do, when she looks like death warmed over.

But about 40 minutes into class, a mug appears in front of Professor Sawyer. Someone else is handing it to her, just off camera. The mug is steaming.

"Oh, thanks love," Professor Sawyer says, not on mute.

The group text explodes. Speculations fly wildly—each more hysterical than the next. Susanna is convinced that the voice that murmured a reply was a woman. Katie's worried that the professor has covid. Sarah, being a bummer, reminds them that British people call everyone "love."

Susanna reminds her that Professor Sawyer isn't British.

At the end of class, the professor grimaces a little. "Pro tip, guys," she says into the camera. "Don't get sushi from Jumbo Fish, on 5th. Worst food poisoning of my life."

"Oh thank god," Katie accidentally says out loud, off mute. "I thought you had covid."

Professor Sawyer smiles at her, obviously touched. "Thankfully no. Just spent a few glorious days and nights getting acquainted with how poorly *someone* cleans our bathroom floor."

The word "someone" is pointed. One of her eyebrows raises, and she's smirking off camera. There's an indistinct but indignant mumble from someone else.

"WHO DOES SHE LIVE WITH," Sarah texts. "You don't ride out food poisoning with anyone you aren't like, super serious with!" 

* * *

Not too long after Professor Sawyer makes a full recovery, Dr. Danvers is working her senior seminar through an incredibly complex problem. She's being exceptionally patient—for her, at least—but tailoring a vaccine for an Almedrian Flu to be given to eight other species is HARD.

The students are in breakout rooms and Dr. Danvers is popping between them, offering help where she can.

Katie, Sarah, and Susanna have lucked out and are in one together.

"That's it," Susanna moans, snapping her notebook closed. "I'm changing my major."

"To what?" Katie asks.

"Joan," Sarah deadpans, and, just as that moment, Dr. Danvers slides into their breakout room, connects to audio, and snickers.

She snickers. She laughs, out loud, for what is quite possibly the first time in her life.

She laughs out loud, at a _gay joke_. 

Dr. Danvers showed up in their breakout room and laughed out loud at a joke about how someone's first night of lesbian sex is good enough to change their entire life.

"Um, sorry, Professor," Sarah stutters, but Dr. Danvers just waves it off.

"Is there a particular reason Susanna is changing majors?" she asks, her voice light, like they aren't all tiptoeing around the conversation topic of life changing lesbian sex.

Susanna—bright red and horribly embarrassed—gratefully seizes on the opportunity to change the subject, and desperately tries to understand what the hell an Almedrian Flu will do to a human immune system.

All three try to pay attention but it's exceedingly difficult right now. 

A few minutes later, Dr. Danvers is reviewing their work (also known as ripping it apart) when there's a flick of a black tail in the corner of her screen.

"Get off," she says, clearly nudging at something feline on her desk. "Go downstairs. Go on. Go downstairs." 

They could only see the tip of the tail, but all three students immediately know one thing: that wasn't Gertrude's tail. It was black, and sleek, and not at all fluffy.

It was a cat's tail, but it wasn't Gertrude's.

Which means Dr. Danvers has a second cat. 

"What do you get when you combine two cats and one gay reference?" Katie asks the group chat.

"A fucking terrifying lesbian," Susanna answers.

* * *

Susanna misses two classes and three assignments in a row. Professor Sawyer is worried—it's so unlike her. She emails and emails, and then finally just calls her on zoom, ringing her computer like a landline.

Susanna answers the call, her eyes puffy.

"Professor?" 

"Hey, I'm sorry to call you out of the blue, but I was worried about you." The professor's voice is soft and low, carefully calibrated to be soothing, to ease anxiety. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

Susanna nods, something a little jerky in it. "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm sorry I've missed class. I'll, um, make it up, or something."

But Sawyer's shaking her head. "I don't care about the classes," she says, still so calm and caring. "Do you want to talk about what's been going on?"

Susanna shrugs, but the professor can tell she means yes. She stays quiet, her eyes gentle, her background still. Sammy jumps up onto her lap, and she absently strokes her head.

"It's just hard being at home," Susanna finally says. 

She blinks a few times before she says it.

"My parents don't, um...they don't know some things about me. Personal things."

"Ah." This phone call, then. Sawyer knows all about this phone call. She's had more of them during zoom world than she'd ever hoped for.

She skips right to the important part. "Did they find something out that you weren't ready for?"

Susanna nods, looking surprised that Professor Sawyer hasn't asked more questions before understanding what she meant.

"Are you okay? Safe, I mean?"

She nods. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay. They're not...it's okay. They're just...disappointed, I guess. They're kind of ignoring me." She shrugs again. "It's not a big deal."

But Professor Sawyer shakes her head. "Yes it is." Her voice is still soft, but it's firmer now. More assertive. "It's a very big deal." She lets out a soft breath, and something tight in her shoulders eases.

"When you finally decide to show people you love a part of yourself—and it should be your decision to do it—they should love that part, just like they love the rest of you. And when they don't, it's devastating." She looks closely into the camera. "It's okay to feel hurt."

Susanna nods a few times, clearly blinking back tears.

"I was outed to my parents, when I was a little younger than you."

Susanna's head snaps up.

Professor Sawyer gives her a wry smile, completely aware of the OMGSHESGAY synapses firing in Susanna's brain.

"It was really awful," Sawyer says, still soft, "and I know the phrase is overused, but it really—it really did get better. My life is so good, now. Their disappointment, and disapproval, it was painful, but it..." She shrugs a little. "It still stings, it still hurts, but it's not the biggest thing in my life anymore. The good things in my life are so much bigger than them."

Susanna, clearly not ready to completely lose it in front of her favorite professor, tries to lighten the mood. "Like Sammy?"

Sawyer smiles at her. "Like Sammy," she agrees. "And like my friends, my community. My found family."

She looks up and over her computer then, and a smile Susanna has never seen comes across her face.

"And my wife." 

A hand—white and pale and strong—grasps Sawyer's shoulder, just for a second.

"You have a WIFE?"

Sawyer grins at her. "I do. It's very awesome. Can't recommend it highly enough, honestly." 

They talk for a few more minutes, about coping strategies, virtual therapy, and housing options, and Susanna tries to ask about extra credit but Sawyer waves it off twice.

"Thank you," Susanna says softly, and Sawyer knows that she doesn't just mean for the extra credit.

But for the phone call and the support and for sharing about her life, which she's so carefully kept private for so long.

"Anytime," Sawyer says softly, and goes to end the call.

Just before she successfully leaves the meeting, Susanna hears a woman's voice in the background.

"Come here, babe," it says, loving and firm, like she heard everything and now she's going to hold Professor Sawyer and whisper loving words into her ear until she forgets everything but the two of them.

* * *

It happens on just a normal Thursday. Days don't really have meaning anymore, of course, each just melting into the next in an unchanging blob of Marchseptober, but this is a Thursday. It's a Thursday because it's Criminology 304 in the afternoon.

They're going through one of the assigned readings for the week when it happens.

A cat jumps up onto Professor Sawyer's lap while she's talking.

This, of course, would not be at all notable if it were a small black cat with delicate features and a loud purr.

But it's an enormous, round, fluffy tabby cat, with long hair and fat paws. It circles her lap twice before flopping down and wantonly displaying her furry stomach.

And she means to type it in the group chat, she really does, but every synapse in Katie's brain is blaring and sending off smoke, so she accidentally puts it in the zoom chat box instead.

"HOLY SHIT"  
"IS THAT GERTRUDE?????"

Professor Sawyer looks in the chat box, and her eyebrows rise. "Yeah," she says into the camera, confused. "Is that exciting?"

A quick beat, and then she looks even more quizzical. "Wait, how do you—" She cuts herself off, pauses, and then something slides across her face.

It hits all of them at once.

"Oh."

"Gertrude comes to Dr. Danvers' senior seminar sometimes," Susanna offers, trying not to scream. Professor Sawyer had said she has a WIFE, and now she has the same cat as DOCTOR "A C IS AN AVERAGE GRADE" DANVERS???

Professor Sawyer's mouth is twitching, but she keeps it inside. "Well, great. Yes, this is my other cat, Gertrude." She rolls her eyes a little. "And no, I didn't pick the name."

"I love her," Sarah says, beyond giddy with disbelief. "So fluffy!"

"She's a good girl," Professor Sawyer agrees, rubbing her belly. "Enjoys the finer things in life."

At the end of class, everyone signs off except Susanna, Katie, Sarah, and Professor Sawyer (and Gertrude who is snoring on her lap, belly up).

"Do you guys have a question?"

The three students try to make eye contact to decide who has to talk, but that doesn't work on zoom.

"Um, are you..." Katie tries, but it dries up in her throat.

"AreyoumarriedtoDoctorDanvers?" It pours out of Susanna in a rush, her cheeks a magnificent pink even before she's finished.

Professor Sawyer laughs a little, something sweet and kind in it.

She pats Gertrude on the belly with a wry smile.

"Cat's out of the bag, huh?" 

"She's a pretty distinctive cat," Sarah says.

"Especially with a name like Gertrude," Katie can't help but add.

"Okay, you can blame Alex for that one," Professor Sawyer says quickly, almost laughing. "I had nothing to do with it."

"What can you blame Alex for?" comes a voice from off camera.

All three students sit up straight, anxiety coursing through them. This is Dr. Danvers. The scariest, hardest, most intimidating, least personable professor any of them have ever had.

She clearly wanted this to be a secret, and they've just ruined it, and she's about to find out, and if she fails them, it will be really hard to graduate on time.

"Naming our cat 'Gertrude,'" Professor Sawyer says, looking up over her computer.

"Oh my _god_." It's Dr. Danvers' voice, alright, but it doesn't sound like it does during class. It's sarcastic but affectionate. Something softer in it than any of them could have imagined.

"It's a great name and we both know it." It sounds like the voice is coming closer. "Who are you talking to?"

Her face pops on camera.

"Oh," Dr. Danvers says, catching sight of the three students, and looking quickly at Professor Sawyer, a question clear even through zoom.

"We're busted," Professor Sawyer says, but she's smiling.

Dr. Danvers, who is quite possibly named Alex—which is mind boggling for its normalcy—looks at the zoom, and then down at Gertrude.

"Ah," she says, clearly putting two and two together. "Turncoat Gertie."

Susanna's about to say something—promise they won't tell anyone, offer to let Dr. Danvers mind wipe them, consider transferring schools—but then Dr. Danvers just pulls up a chair and sits down right next to Sawyer, reaching out to scratch Gert's belly like everything's fine.

"You know what that means?" she says to Professor Sawyer, one eyebrow up.

"Ugh," Sawyer says, but she's not really mad. "Yes."

"Say it."

Sawyer rolls her eyes, but she says it. "You win the bet."

Dr. Danvers positively cackles, and all three students are pretty sure they're hallucinating at this point.

"I'm sorry," Sarah finally says. "What's happening right now?"

Professor Sawyer grins at her. "Alex and I made a bet about how long it would take our students to realize we were married, now that we're teaching from home."

"I won," Dr. Danvers says, practically preening into the camera.

"You little bastard," Professor Sawyer says to Gert, who is still happily splayed in her lap. "Two more weeks and I'd have been the champion!"

"Dream on," Dr. Danvers says, but she's bumping Professor Sawyer's shoulder with her own, and they just clearly like each other so much.

"Well, ladies," Dr. Danvers says, turning her attention back to the zoom. "How are your papers coming?"

"Excuse me, this is MY class," Sawyer says, faux indignant.

"I think we have joint custody now," Danvers says, gesturing at the screen. "Your visiting hours are over."

"Pssh," Professor Sawyer pretends to shove her. "Get your own zoom."

Dr. Danvers rolls her eyes, but she's standing up. "Fine. Fine. Ladies, papers by Friday at 5pm."

"Oh, come on, Alex," Sawyer says. "Give them til Monday morning."

Dr. Danvers raises an absolutely devastating eyebrow, but Professor Sawyer seems to be immune.

"We're going camping," Sawyer says. "You know you're not touching them until Monday anyway."

All three students hold their breaths. They just came here for the cats and gay mystery, honestly.

Dr. Danvers narrows her eyes at Professor Sawyer, her lips pursed, like she's considering it.

"Fine," she finally says. "Monday at 9am. No excuses."

She scoops Gertrude up out of her wife's lap and walks off camera without so much as a wave goodbye.

Still terrifying, then.

* * *

Neither of them mentions each other in class for the rest of the semester, but the cats seem to be coming and going more freely between the two work spaces.

Sometimes Sammy will leave an indecipherable streak of letters in Dr. Danvers' chat box, and every once in a while Gertie will fling herself onto Sawyer's lap during class and yowl until she's given the attention she deserves.

Susanna, Katie, and Sarah could almost convince themselves that it was an intensely vivid shared hallucination, but then they log into the LGBT center's zoom Christmas celebration, and there they are.

Professor Sawyer and Dr. Danvers, sitting on a couch together, cats in their laps. Sawyer is wearing a Christmas sweater, and Danvers is wearing her usual black. But she has her arm around her wife, and she laughs three times, and calls Professor Sawyer "Maggie" twice and "babe" once.

Gertrude snores the whole time, splayed out across both their laps.


End file.
